


By the Sea

by TheHoardingPuffin



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Adorable Jester Lavorre, Fluff, Friendship, Gen, Jester Lavorre-centric, Pre-Canon, Trickster Gods
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-12
Updated: 2019-10-12
Packaged: 2020-12-13 19:03:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,759
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21002636
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheHoardingPuffin/pseuds/TheHoardingPuffin
Summary: Or: Jester meets the Traveler. And then, the meets him again. And again.





	By the Sea

**Author's Note:**

> Pretty self-explainatory, isn't it? Basically, moments of Jester and the traveler before the events of the Mighty Nein Campain. Look, I just wanted to write something nice, I basically just write H/C, this is new territory!  
Hope you like it!

When she first meets him, she is barely four years old and has run away to play at the beach. She doesn’t like being alone in her room, and even though her Momma always makes sure to kiss her goodnight and tries to make as much time for her as possible, and even though she has all kinds of toys and also Bluud to play with, it can get boring at home. She likes being outside, and she likes the sea. She can see it from the window of her room, but that’s not the same as being _right there_.

She sits down in the white soft sand and watches the sparkling blue water for a while. Nobody is here, but Jester isn’t old enough to think about this. Instead, she gets up and starts collecting little white seashells and pretty shiny stones and pieces of glass that the sea has shaped and softened into matte, rounded bits that look like diamonds. At least to the little blue tiefling girl, they do.

She can carry a decent amount of things in the skirt of her dress, but when she bows down to pick up an especially large, beautiful pink shell, half of her collected treasures fall to the ground.

Jester plumps down onto the sand, tries to collect everything again and holds back the tears that sting in her eyes. She doesn’t even know why she starts crying, because she knows it’s not a big deal, but still…

And then, there is a brown hand with golden freckles on it that hands her the big pink shell. Jester shrieks and looks up, and there is a cloaked and hooded figure, dressed in deep green. From under the hoods, she can see a brown chin and lips that form a friendly smile, and ends of reddish hair.

“Hello there, little one”, the man says. His voice is nice - warm and soft and melodious, and Jester, in all her childish naivety and openness, trusts him immediately.

“Hewwo”, she says and takes the pink seashell. “Who are you?”

A soft laugh. “I have many names. You can call me The Traveler, if you like.”

“Okay.” Jester nods. “I am Jester.”

“I know.” Again, the mouth twitches into a smile. “I have been watching you. You are a little whirlwind, aren’t you?”

Jester shrugs. She doesn’t know what this Traveler means by that, but she won’t admit it.

“You like causing trouble?”, the man asks. This time, Jester nods enthusiastically. She does like causing trouble as long as nobody gets hurt. She hides things and ties shoelaces together and that sort of things.

“You like twouble too?”, she asks, The Traveler nods.

“Very much.”

Jester giggles. “I ran away, you know?”, she tells him in a loud half-whisper.

“I know.”

“Is that trouble, too?”

The Traveler seems to think about it. “It is… but maybe it is not good trouble.”

“Huh?” Jester is confused.

“Well… Bluud and your mother will worry, don’t you think?”

Jester gasps because she has not thought of that.

“I’ll guide you back home”, the Traveler offers. And he does. Jester gets home without any problems, her skirt holding a bunch of pretty things and shells.

She runs into Bluud, who pulls her into a hug and hold her tight and tells her that she cannot do things like that. Her pretty things fall to the ground, so Jester frees herself to pick everything up. Then, she follows Bluud upstairs. Her Momma is waiting, and she shrieks when she sees her daughter, and hugs and kisses her and tells her a hundred times that she was so, so worried.

“I was just at the beach”, Jester says. “And I wasn’t alone, you know?”

This seems to worry her Momma, which Jester doesn’t understand. She tells her about the Traveler, and this seems to confuse her mother. But she calms herself, hugs Jester again, takes the rest of the day off and looks at all the treasures Jester had found.

When Jester goes to bed that night, the big pink seashell sits on the shelf over her bed where she can see it. She also sees, for the briefest moment, the hooded figure of the Traveler, who sits at the end of her bed and then, with the sound of laughter and waves clashing on the sand, disappears. Somehow, Jester knows that she will see him again.

And she does. At first, it is just about once per week that the Traveler appears in her room, plays with her and talks about good trouble and tricks and pranks. Then, it is every fourth day, and then every second day. The Traveler becomes her best friend, and she adores him. She never sees his face, or learns his real, true name, but she doesn’t mind. When she is about six years old, he starts teaching her tricks. He teaches her how to find out whether there is magic happening in a place. He teaches her how to locate things and how to find people. He teaches her how to cause chaos without people noticing until all is said and done. He is a good teacher, and an even better friend. Jester, in return, gifts him dozens of drawings, which he cannot take with him, so she puts them in her room. 

Under the guidance of the Traveler, she learns how to heal and how to hurt, and how to create a weapon from thin air. This one is a gift for her fifteenth birthday, and when she manages to create a big, bright pink swirly lollypop for the first time, the Traveler cheers and laughs. His pride for Jester radiates off him and makes Jester all bubbly and giggly and happy.

To the Traveler, she tells all her secrets. First, she tells him in person, but as she gets older, she also starts her journal, her sketchbook. She draws in there, and she writes messages. She also draws the Traveler in there, draws his gold-brown hands and his wide green cloak with the hood. She shows this drawing to her Momma, like all the drawings she is very proud of. Her Momma compliments it and smiles, but Jester can see that she doesn’t fully understand it. She has never seen the Traveler, even though he often hangs out in Jester’s room. She thinks that Jester made him up, and the older Jester gets, the more worried she gets that Jester might be ill in her mind.

“Momma”, Jester says. “You know that I’m not crazy, right?”

Marion Lavorre sighs. “I know, my little Sapphire but… it all sounds so bizarre and fantastic. I have never seen this friend of yours, and you said he just… appears and disappears… forgive me that I worry. You are my baby, after all. I _have to_ worry about you.”

“But… I…” Jester thinks for a moment, then lets her magical lollipop appear. Her mother gasps.

“I can do this because he taught me”, Jester says. She thinks for a moment and makes herself look like a light-skinned human girl with wild red curls and brown eyes and a big red birthmark on her nose.

“And I can do this. And… uh… I can heal people now, and I can find things and…”

She tells her mother everything the Traveler has taught her. Her mother still seems worried, but she seems to believe her daughter more now.

“He must be a spirit then”, she says. “Or… a deity nobody has heard about.”

“Maybe.”

Jester asks the Traveler about that. “Are you a god, Traveler?”, she asks when he appears in her room that night. The Traveler shrugs. “You could say that.”

“Are there other people that can see you?”, she asks.

“Not many. Nobody as often as you do.” The Traveler smiles gently. Jester cocks her head. “Does that mean I’m your favourite?”

“Yes, Jester”, the Traveler confirms. “You are most definitely my favourite. My little cleric.”

“Your cleric?”, Jester asks. “Am I a cleric?”

“You are, I have taught you to be.” The Traveler makes a wide gesture. “And I will teach you more.”

“And I will cause trouble for you”, Jester says. She means it. She feels that the Traveler means it, too.

As she gets older, gets to leave her home more often, gets to cause more trouble, her bond to the Traveler gets stronger, her pranks bigger, her humor cheekier. She starts leaving little paintings of dicks and a hooded green figure on walls and then hurries away before anyone can catch her. She goes to stores and rearranges things on the shelves. She devotes to being the Travelers cleric and his preacher. She brings chaos for him, but always makes sure to maintain the balance. The Traveler loves trouble, but he values balance as well.

And then, the thing with the client of her mother happens. Jester and the Traveler both love it, they think it is incredibly funny, but the client is stuck-up and disagrees. He wants Jester dead. She has to leave, she knows it.

Her mother knows, too. Still, both of them cry as they say goodbye. Jester has money and clothes and painting supplies and her sketchbook, and a medallion on her belt that her mother had made for her as a birthday gift, based on a painting Jester has made. It is made from gold and silver and little colourful gems and looks like a doorway. It’s the symbol of the Traveler.

Jester leaves the _Lavish Chateau_, her home, the only place she had ever really known, in disguise. She made herself look like a tall man in fancy blue and gold garments with blonde hair and beards. She drops this disguise once she has left the city. She doesn’t know where to go, really, other than that she needs to get into the empire. But the Traveler is there, by her side, and he leads her and guides her. He teaches her further, and she paints and carves dicks everywhere she can, and leaves drawings and graffiti. She will get more people to follow the Traveler, she swears this to herself. The Traveler very much approves of this plan.

One day, the Traveler shows her the faces of two people, a green male halforc and a tanned human girl. Without even questioning it, Jester knows that she needs to find those two. She will find those two. The Traveler will help her if she needs it.

Another week later, she first meets Fjord and Beauregard.


End file.
